


Living Hurts Us More

by AshaCrone



Series: For Family [4]
Category: Doom (2005), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Existential Angst, Gen, Old Age, meditation on mortality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-12 06:08:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshaCrone/pseuds/AshaCrone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The option had never been available to him before, but Reaper comes face to face with his own mortality, and has to ask the question:</p>
<p>Does it hurt to get old? </p>
<p>A short story of tea and friendship. Originally written as the epilogue to Until It's Gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title and poem by Emily Dickinson.
> 
> When writing this, I listened to [Farewell, and Into the Inevitable](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m6--1CPf0w) which definitely set the mood for this story.

_Tis not dying hurts us so, tis living, hurts us more  
For dying is a different way, a kind behind the door._

The humidity was thick enough to chew in the falling dusk over his house in Marietta, Georgia. The house he had raised his daughters in, had given to his wife when his secrets and her temper had driven them apart. It sweltered in the dying light as he sipped his sweet, iced tea, feeling the condensation drip on his leg and down his arm. Laughter rang down across the yard as the grand-kids chased lightning bugs, almost drowned out by the chorus of cicadas.

Bones couldn't bring himself to look at the vial, sitting in its case on the swing beside him, innocuous and innocent and most definitely wasn't going to jump up and jab him in the neck. He was afraid of it, even if the vial itself could do no harm. It represented something he had prayed for and shunned for over two hundred years... his own mortality. But not one of the people inside the house would force this on him.

No, this choice was his, and his alone.

The family dinner was over: his daughter, beautiful Joanna and her clan of children and grandchildren all swarming over the building, his sister that he had never thought to see again, his best nemesis and a certain communications officer that he had befriended, and the man he had dragged back from past the veil, all had joined with the elder Vulcan who looked at them all with haunted and loving eyes. He had helped break out the pie when the main meal was done. Now Sam was chatting with Joanna about her kids while Jim tried to flirt with Bone's sister (and wasn't being entirely unsuccessful.) Spock the younger and Nyota were talking about pie and shop talk in the living room. 

The flow of life, of family, and peace enveloped him in a thick honey glaze he feared would evaporate in the morning. He tried not to move, to breathe, because then this fragile peace would shatter and would never have existed. He didn't want to see it end... but it would. Nothing this good could last.

The sunset lanced at his eyes, and he blinked, and snorted to himself. "Too old." He took a sip, wished for some alcohol as echoes of voices long gone filled his ears. "I've lived too goddamn long."

"That is something I have often wondered myself," a voice interrupted, and John looked up to see Ambassador Spock lower himself into the whicker chair across from the swing. 

"Are you making a statement, or just wanting me to go jump off a building?" John said, then snorted and reached over to the small table between them, and poured his guest a glass of tea. The corners of the Vulcan's eyes were creased in a smile that never found his lips. He nodded at the gesture, and picked up the glass, taking a long sip.

"Cause if that's really your intent it won't work. Never has." 

The smile in Spock's eyes faded, to be replaced with old shadows. "I am aware."

John looked away; his own shadows were bad enough. "Problem is, living so long, it gets to be a habit." He rocked the swing, easing it back and forth as the sunset shifted enough to be a pleasant, dim glow. "You get so far away from people, from living, you kinda forget what it is to be in that moment with everyone else."

"Yes." Spock sounded like gravel. "Believe it or not, you are not the first to have felt such emotions."

Bones blinked at him, and rubbed his face. He carefully put his tea down, and hunched over as he rubbed his eyes, covered his lips with his doubled up fists. He gazed at the frail half-Vulcan, at his watery eyes and the web of lines crossing his face. "Does it hurt to get old, Spock?"

_The Southern Custom of the Bird_  
 _That ere the frosts are due_  
 _Accepts a better latitude_  
 _We are the Birds that Stay_

"The aging does not. The other associated symptoms, I cannot recommend." He paused. "It is strange, is it not? To see them, their children, and to realize that you are alive still, when they are not? My father saw my mother age while he remained in his prime. At times, I thought he doubted his sanity."

"You're a Vulcan. The entire lot of ya is mad," John replied, covering his eyes again with a weak laugh. 

"Perhaps." He took a sip of his tea. "But as illogical as it was, he loved her." Then he smiled again, lips quirking just a bit. "And the events of this timeline have reminded me that, while my father had known my mother would have died long before he did, he had no way of knowing the future. The life they had together was worth the risk, because death could take anyone, at any time."

Howls of childish laughter continued into the dusk, mixed with the warm chatter going on inside the house. "I don't know if I can stay, Spock. Knowing that they'll all grow old and die. I could, y'know." He glanced down at the vial, in its case. "Just let go. It might even be better that way. The last weapon of a forgotten war, disarmed at last."

"A logical conclusion... if you were a weapon. I would rather like to think of you as Staff Sergeant John Grimm. As Reaper. As Pete Swafford. As Joseph Darnell. But most of all, I think of you as Doctor Leonard McCoy, a very annoying country doctor with a talent for reminding me that a life of logic has as many regrets as a life of emotion." Spock's eyes met his. "My friendship with the Jim Kirk of my universe defined me. But the friendship that sustained me, that brought me through the valley of the shadow of death, was with _Bones_. I cannot regret what you are because of that."

"I'm tired, Spock." He leaned back into the swing. Looked up at the sky, to the stars. "But..."

"The world is finally new again."

"Yeah."

There was a last flare of the dying sun and Leonard McCoy picked up the vial case. He had chosen to end his ex-wife's pain when she had begged him for release. He had been a doctor for over a hundred years; allowing her to pass had been the _only_ thing he could have done for her.

That modern medicine would cure her disease within months had sent him off Earth to join Starfleet. There was no knowing the future. He could die in a hull breach. Some mad virus from god-knows-where. His atoms could get scattered through the ether. 

He toyed with the case between his fingers. "It's been one hell of a life, hasn't it, Spock?"

"Indeed." Spock looked out over the flat, green landscape as shadows chased the sun into night. 

"It has been the best."

_The Shiverers round the farmer's door_  
 _For whose reluctant crumb_  
 _We stipulate till pitying snows_  
 _Persuade our Feathers home._


	2. What's not said

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original idea for this story was that Spock wouldn't find out about who McCoy had been. He would speculate, and eventually work out the pieces, but never be told. Until It's Gone didn't work out that way, but I still liked this section.

Bones had heard the footsteps, long strides in heavy Fleet issued boots that fell just a bit too precisely, a bit too evenly, for any human. They echoed to his keen ears, along with a heartbeat that thrummed like a bird's, through the narrow halls. He didn't turn around at the hiss of the door, nor did he acknowledge that the source of that fluttering beat was directly behind him.

"You are leaving the Enterprise."

"Congratulations, Spock, I commend you on your grasp of the obvious," Bones snarled. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Spock reach for the PADD tossed on his desk in his small quarters. 

There wasn't much else, here in this breadbox he called a cabin, of any value to him; he'd only come back for his old dog tags and a bottle of Tennessee whiskey. The damn stuff was no more potent to him than cough syrup, but the burn brought back memories of better times. Bones thought he would need that tonight. 

"You are resigning your commission?"

"Again, you state the obvious." Bones finally turned around, looking the Vulcan full in the face. In the past year the two had gotten to see each other as comrades, if not friends. They watched Jim's back, tried to keep him from losing his fool head, give the young Captain something to steer by. They had argued, quarreled, almost come to blows, but in the end they had been forced to trust each other's intentions, if not the other's methods. 

_My god_ , Bones thought, a faint smile flickering over his face, dropping as Spock raised one of this damn pointy eyebrows. _My sister as a Vulcan._

"I have stated the effect, but you have not provided a cause. There is no logical reason for you to be leaving Starfleet." The words were clipped, Spock's back stiff. "You are at the height of a prestigious career, you have helped me apprehend the terrorist known as Khan... and you recently brought a clinically dead man back to life. None of these are consistent with a man who would turn his back on everything he has worked for and walking away." His unblinking gaze fought to strip off Leonard's defenses. Better had tried, with no more success.

"No logical reason? Surely you can do better than that, Spock." Leonard let the full weight of his years bow him, before taking a breath and slapping it off. "Use that big Vulcan brain of yours. I'm going because it would have had to have happened sooner or later. What happened with Jim just meant it needs to happen now."

Spock's lips tightened, his shoulders drawing up in tension as Leonard hefted his pack and strode past him.

"Is it because," and here Spock hesitated, unsure. "You are an Augment?"

"You're out of your Vulcan mind if you think that," Bones snapped, as he stopped cold and felt a shiver draw a line down his spine. "I've got as much in common with Khan as you do with an Earth raccoon."

Both of Spock's eyebrows twitched. "Nonetheless." His voice lowered more. "The theory fits the evidence. Your knowledge of Augment genetics, the fact that Khan chose to test you in the holding cell, and..." 

Leonard McCoy, formerly Staff Sergeant John Grimm, really should have seen it coming. 

The blow was fast, not quite as fast as Khan or himself, but all the more surprising because of it. His head snapped sideways, teeth loosening in their sockets, cracking his jaw and leaving a bloody contusion across his face. Despite this, McCoy didn't even shift his feet, but returned the blow on instinct with the habit of a thousand brawls, sending Spock staggering backwards.

Spock regained his footing, his eyebrows up again as he saw the injury vanish from Bone's face in an instant, leaving only a smear of blood.

"You heal far faster than any unaltered human. Whatever you are, it is not a simple country doctor."

Bones grimaced, fingers itching to first thrash the hobgoblin and then grab his medkit to fix it. "Spock, if you were trying to talk me out of going, you are doing one hell of a piss poor job of it."

There was silence for a moment. "I do not know. Given your attitudes, you are not the same as Khan. Given your demeanor, I would suggest that you were altered during adulthood." Spock kept looking, even as his left eye started swelling and turning a sickly shade of green. "You clearly knew Khan, despite your denials. He knew you. So... you were a late experiment, during the Eugenics Wars. Given the rate of your healing," and here Spock became quiet, "your aging is likely to be vastly retarded, if not stopped entirely. Fascinating. You have survived both the Eugenics Wars and World War III, and you-"

"Spock. What the hell are you doing here?" He had never thought he would hear the Vulcan babble, but he remembered seeing Spock lose it during the fight with Khan, and his subtle fretting over Jim. Spock hadn't gotten his equilibrium back.

"The Captain would recover far more quickly under your care."

"Uh-huh," McCoy muttered, hand on one hip. "Right. Now that he's out of danger it's only a matter of time. He'll be better," and he had to stop himself from spitting, getting past the sour taste in his mouth. "Better than ever." Of course Jim would be better. Bones had used his own blood, after all.

"You would be breaking apart a productive working dynamic."

Now Bones knew he was grasping at straws. "Spock, Section 31 finds out about me? What I did to save Jim? Losing a good working dynamic is going to be the least of my worries." He exhaled. "I don't know if it would work on anyone else, Spock. And for the sake of the entire damn planet, I can't let what I am, who I was, and what I did, get out."

Spock's lips tightened again. Bones held up his hand. Denial would be downright stupid at this point, anyways. "I took a gamble on Jim. If I'd lost, I could have produced a monster that made Khan or Nero look like kittens gnawing on our ankles. If I'm found out I'm going to be stuck in some dungeon again while a bunch of well-meaning egg-heads without the sense god gave a mule. Then, they'll drain me dry. And then? And then they create the end of the damn human species." He laughed, mirthlessly, then rubbed the heel of his hand against his face. 

God, why did this have to be so damn hard? 

"Jim doesn't believe in no-win scenarios. Up until this moment, I didn't believe you did, either," Spock said, after a moment, then stepped aside to leave the door clear. "But what you are saying is... logical. I would not be served by trying to use logic to countermand your arguments."

Bones lifted an eyebrow of his own as he walked through the door. Better to make the cut clean and quick and-

"Jim will miss you."

Bones stumbled, stopped. "I'll miss you, too." He couldn't afford to look back as he strode out of his quarters. 

The door closed... and so did the life of Leonard McCoy.

**Author's Note:**

> This was the original epilogue for Until It's Gone, and actually the first bit of Reaper!Bones fic that popped into my head. While I can't use it anymore- I've scrapped a lot of the ideas that lead to this fic- I was very proud of the imagery and flow of the story, so I've chosen to post it anyways. I hope you enjoy it, too.


End file.
